I was born in a forested city in eastern Inner Mongolia and started primary school at the age of four. The school organized an outing to the forest. Because I was much younger than the other students, the teacher sent a class leader who was three years older than me to accompany me and wait for the other students to come back on foot. I felt bored, and the class cadres who accompanied me also complained. I said, let's go in by ourselves, and she thinks it's a good idea. We went into the forest.
Of course, we got lost. Later, all the teachers and staff of the school joined the search and rescue army. But at the same time, I had a lot of fun with the class leader, my caregiver and fellow adventurer.
There is a giant ant nest in the forest, and we will open the ant nest to see what the ant kingdom inside isWe walked along a small stream, and when we ran out of water, we drank the water from those streams;We saw a particularly good-looking bug, a little larger than a grasshopper, with a small red flag on its head, and a pleasantly green body with wonderful patterns on it. We crouched on the ground and observed for a long time, amazed that God had created such a beautiful little thing. I never saw a bug like that again.
We chased the beautiful wildflowers all the way, and even thought that we would sleep in that sea of flowers at night. When the teachers finally found us, they found us among the flowers around a wild grave. We had been missing for almost ten hours, and the outside world was looking for us as if it were the outside world, while the two little children were playing carefree, not at all nervous or scared. Then I remembered that it was like the beginning of a poem by a Swedish poet that I liked, "The Clearing": "There is a clearing in the forest that you can only find when you get lost." ”
Growing up, I never saw anything as beautiful and unexpected as in that forest again. Such a beautiful experience, both visually and spiritually, has had a great impact on my life, and has made me grow up less worried about the unknown. Later, I went to an abandoned psychiatric hospital, which is another story.
Q1: At what point did you realize that you were a woman?
Ju white jadeI was a very typical sexual pervert when I was a child. I've always been round, playing with guns and knives, and playing "Tapping the Mountain" with a group of cousins. At school, the teacher knew that I was biologically a girl, but I wore a boys' uniform and stood in the boys' line. Later, because it was very expensive to cut my hair near the university, I grew my hair long.
I've found that a person's self-perception of gender also depends on how others treat you. Growing up, they treated me like a boy, so I'm just a boy;When everyone treats me like a girl, I suddenly feel like a girl.
Q2: What is your feminist consciousness enlightenment?
Ju white jadeWhen I was a child, I had a copy of Little Women among my read-through books. There is a line in the movie version of "Little Women": "I think women, they have thoughts, they have souls, not just feelings;They are ambitious, talented, not just beautiful. So I'm fed up with people saying that women are only suitable for romance. "I just realized that Little Women had a big impact on me.
Q3: Who is the most courageous person in your eyes?
Ju white jadeI know a very wonderful woman, but her children are special and need extra care. She gave up a promising career and accumulated a career of decades to give all her love to her children. For me, it was a lot of courage. I think courage is built on choices and trade-offs, and there must be something heartbreaking behind all stories of courage.
Q4: How would you accumulate your courage?
Ju white jadeCourage is sometimes instinctive, sometimes it is a humanistic training, and if there is no training, it is a kind of rudeness and recklessness. Sometimes, I have the courage to give up and lose, perhaps more than I have the courage to get. Courage that comes from kindness and responsibility is truly valuable courage.
Q5: Which one would you most like to say "no" to women?
Ju white jadeGetting married was when I really realized that I was a woman and there was a strong sense of deprivation. In the beginning, we had fun and traveled together, and life was very much like a family. But after we have children, our lives change, whether it is Eastern or Western society, in fact, there will be a strong expectation of motherhood. I wanted to be both a good mom and myself, and I didn't want to lose my previous professional experience. In the first few years of having children, I was using all my energy and strength to live.
Mothers have done their best, and they should no longer bear what society says you should be as a mother. Feminism is revealing a truth, and this truth is that I also have the freedom to not be strong.
Q6: What is it that men can easily have but women have a hard time having?
Ju white jadeSometimes I envy those men whose dullness to a lot of things can save them from some pain and responsibility.
Q7: Do you ever feel happy that you are a woman?
Ju white jadeThere are children. Although I can use the word "hard" to describe the life when I first had a child, my heart is always full. I know that I will not be lonely in this life, and I will have a life that I need to bear completely.
It's not the same as being a dad. You know that a child who lives in your body for a long time and then separates from the body is a particularly surprising thing, both biologically and psychologically: how can one person conjure up another?
Of course, the best moment as a woman must not be singular, and it must be mixed with many complicated things to experience with tears.
Q8: What would you like to say to your male friends?
Ju white jadeWe don't want anyone's experience, we just want our own experience.
Q9: If women could go on a group adventure, what would it be that they would like to do?
Ju white jadeI want to do extreme things with the women I like, like hunting with Eskimos and spending days together in the Amazon rainforest.
Q10: Share a feminist work you love and explain why.
Ju white jadeAmong domestic artists, I like the works of Jiang Jie and Xiang Jing. I don't admire or aspire to women who seem very powerful, I like the complex, organic, and rich feelings and expressions of women. I wrote art criticism for Jiang Jie's exhibition Between Pitches, and what I saw was a lot of fragile pieces coming together, but they all made up something indestructible and resilient.
Producer: Shu Zhenmeng.
Photo: Zhang Qidi.
Producer: Jinni Zhang.
Editor: Meng Yi.
Interview & Finishing: Cai Zhiqin.
Operations: Lu Jun, Xiao Wen.
WeChat design: zhang tiantian
Styling: Zhang Qianyun.
Makeup and hair: Han Xiao.
Props: Yang Zhijian.
Photography Assistant: Lin Xu.
Makeup and hair assistant: Xiao Hao.
Styling assistant: Wang Nan.
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